New advanced processors from IBM mimic the mammalian brain -- let's hope they're on our side

International Business Machines, Inc. (IBM) has been working on a project co-funded by both the U.S. military and various academic partners to develop a chip that "thinks" and "processes" perception like a fleshy life form. IBM calls the project SyNAPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) after the structure in neurons that's used to signal the neurons they're associated with.

Fifty-three million dollars in grant money later, they have produced a complete neural networks development packages that aims to offer some abstraction and to ease the process of developing neuronal networks that can process and respond to sensor input.

One example showcased by IBM shows a neural network using a retinal sensor, which mimics the human eye. A real human brain translates over 1 terabyte of raw visual data a day into recognized shapes, tracked motions, depth perceptions, and self-tuning feedback to the sensors based on light conditions. By comparison IBM's network is far simpler, accomplishing basic shape detection.

(left: retinal sensor "vision"; right: significant shape output)

Dr. Modha comments, "Architectures and programs are closely intertwined and a new architecture necessitates a new programming paradigm. We are working to create a FORTRAN for synaptic computing chips. While complementing today’s computers, this will bring forth a fundamentally new technological capability in terms of programming and applying emerging learning systems."

Neural networks in the future could be used to create fully autonomous attack drones and ground-based war robots. Facial recognition neural networks could also sort through feeds of small ground based and high-flying high-resolution air based camera drones, as well as hacked cloud-connected cameras in the target state, to recognize targets slated for termination. With the target's location in hand, the killing robots could then be dispatched using lightweight neural networks to perform target identification and aiming.

Currentlty the project is in its third phase, which received $12M USD in additional funding. IBM hosts details of the past rounds (Phase 0, Phase 1, and Phase 2), for those interested.

IBM and its academic partners are more interested in the science and financial implications of the project than the warfare side. Among the applications they're eyeing are:

predictive stock/currency trading

drug development

climate/environmental monitoring

autonomous cars

service robots

behavioral marketing

A graphical representation of IBM's neural network abstraction scheme

IBM describes the justification for this new computing paradigm commenting:

Although they are fast and precise “number crunchers,” computers of traditional design become constrained by power and size while operating at reduced effectiveness when applied to real-time processing of the noisy, analog, voluminous, Big Data produced by the world around us. In contrast, the brain—which operates comparatively slowly and at low precision—excels at tasks such as recognizing, interpreting, and acting upon patterns, while consuming the same amount of power as a 20 watt light bulb and occupying the volume of a two-liter bottle.
...
IBM’s long-term goal is to build a chip system with ten billion neurons and hundred trillion synapses, while consuming merely one kilowatt of power and occupying less than two liters of volume.

Neural networks are the most optimal design ever produced by nature for the purpose of survival by dramatic transformation of the environment in which a living organism lives. Neural networks could one day help machines serve mankind performing menial tasks and helping to cure disease. Alternatively, they could potentially be the most lethal combination of destructive power, obedience, and precision ever witnessed by mankind, potentially killing millions with the press of a single button.

In that regard neural networks and ubiquitous massively parallel sensor networks are perhaps the most promising yet deadly tool produced by mankind since the fateful splitting of the atom.

Thank you.Its not the technology that's the problem here.It's the Humans that program/use it.

I find it very disheartening people apparently project 'scifi doomsday film' scenarios onto real life when those movies were made by artists who have a limited understanding of technology and science in the first place.

On the bright side, this could easily have numerous beneficial applications for far better and highly efficient system managing and problem solving.

Computers have already been put to various tasks where they invented a 'new internet' that's faster, more efficient, etc.Tons of useful applications.

for instance the desire of the nazi's to wipe out jewish populations in central and eastern europe was not unique, there is well a documented history of terrible periodic pogroms over the last two thousand years. what made the nazis different to every other anti-semitic group over the last few millenia is that with mechanised warfare and industrilisation, for the first time, they had the technology to realise their goal.

that doesnt mean to say that i'm against cars and factories!i'm just saing that new enabling technologies can have a downside - if you think about them before widespread implementation it can probably mitigate some of the harm without hopefully impeding the benefits.